Unions, aka traditional liberalism, brought you the weekend. That was the New Deal, see, you get the same compensation for only 40 hours work a week. Is this common knowledge? No. There are a lot more like it... but none equal the Holy American Weekend.
Mind you... I'm sort of a time iconoclast myself... one of my goals was always to live without knowing what day of the week it is. I hate "daylight saving time" in a nearly irrational way ("look... we shall move the sun back ONE HOUR in the sky... we are mighty!!!"... gee, how about you just change your schedule according to the season... "NO! I am TOO MIGHTY!!! TIME ITSELF SHALL CHANGE!!!"). And a twelve month calender is a subversion against nature... have you ever realized that if months were 28 days long there would be 13 equal sized months... and new moon would be the same day every month! They hate the moon, the lunar mother, her annual number.
But I'm not against a five day work week... or a four day work week either...
While I like that each of us should take our "weekends" when it suits us, and I sometimes choose to work on my day off or take off my work days... the weekend as we know it is a product of the 40 hour work week, and the weekend is all ours.
The wealthy don't believe in the weekend, they work all the time, expect work all the time. I'll never forget an email from our CEO that a 60 hour work week was ok if you wanted to tread water, but to be motivated and get ahead you needed to be putting in 80 hour work weeks. It was in reply to an burnt out artist's complaint via company email.
But people... they don't just love weekends they live for them... and the concept, the frame, of The Weekend is fully a liberal accomplishment.
him:"I hate liberals"
me:"What do you have against The Weekend?"
Update [2005-2-26 16:59:44 by pyrrho]: dr z points out the cycle of the moon is actually 29.5 days... which is the reality... my dream of perfect months takes a blow... but I still got the rest of the weekend... and I still want 13 28 day months per year and the remaining time off...